National Lawyers Guild - Portlandhttps://www.nlg.org/taxonomy/term/107
enThird Northwest activist jailed for staying silent https://www.nlg.org/news/third-northwest-activist-jailed-staying-silent
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Natasha Lennard </div>
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Salon.com </div>
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<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2012-10-11T00:00:00-04:00">Thu, 10/11/2012</span> </div>
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<a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/third_northwest_activist_jailed_for_staying_silent/">View the original piece</a> </div>
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<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.nlg.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_node/public/images/Leah_tumblr_m833c7VV0U1qbfri1o1_500-460x307.jpg?itok=QR8ipOCj" width="400" height="267" alt="" title="Leah Lynne-Plante" /> </div>
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<p>“Today is October 10th, 2012, and I am ready to go to prison,” announced 24-year-old Leah-Lynn Plante yesterday. By Thursday morning, the Portland activist was in custody and could remain incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison for 18 months, although she has not been charged with a crime.</p>
<p>Along with two others in the Pacific Northwest, Plante was remanded into federal custody for her refusal to provide a grand jury testimony regarding activists in the region. Matt Duran and Kteeo Olejnik were jailed in previous weeks for, like Plante, refusing to cooperate with a grand jury. All three are now being held in U.S. federal prison, not because they are being punished for crime, but, as the National Lawyers Guild’s executive director Heidi Boghosian told me earlier this year, “to coerce cooperation.”</p>
<p>Writing for Truth-Out in August about the Northwest grand juries and those resisting cooperation, I noted that grand juries “are among the blackest boxes in the federal judiciary system.” The closed-door procedures are rare instances in which an individual loses the right to remain silent. As was the case with the Northwest grand juries resistors, the grand jury can grant a subpoenaed individual personal immunity; Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination are therefore protected, but silence is not. In these instances, refusal to speak can be considered civil contempt. Non-cooperators can be jailed for the 18-month length of the grand jury.</p>
<p>“The arbitrary issuing of subpoenas to activists and pressuring them to divulge information about others in secret proceedings extends to arresting them when they decide to resist,” NLG’s Boghosian told me Thursday, commenting that the grand jury subpoena process has a “star chamber quality.”</p>
<p>Lawyers, scholars and activists alike have long complained about the use of federal grand juries as tools for political repression. The case of the Northwest grand jury resistors is now well-known in activist and anarchist circles around the country. As I wrote in August:</p>
<p> The Seattle grand jury subpoenas were served in late July, when the FBI and a Joint Terrorist Task Force conducted a series of raids on activist homes and squats in Portland, Olympia and Seattle with warrants seeking out computers, phones, black clothing and “anarchist literature.” The FBI has stated only that the grand jury pertains to “violent crime,” but it is believed to relate to property damage in Seattle during this year’s May Day protests…</p>
<p> Will Potter, author of “Green Is the New Red,” who has long covered the state persecution of environmental activists and anarchists, noted in a recent interview… “I think what’s most indicative of what’s going on though is that specific call for agents to seize ‘anarchist literature’ as some kind of evidence of potential illegal activity.” He added that the convening of a grand jury is “especially troubling because grand juries have been used historically against social movements as tools of fishing expeditions, and they’re used to seek out information about people’s politics and their political associations.”</p>
<p>Facing a number of months in prison, Plante remained steadfast in her refusal to speak to the grand jury. Aware that she would likely face jail time, given the previous incarceration of two other resistors, Plante gave a public statement the morning of her grand jury hearing Wednesday. She detailed the depression and fear triggered by the threat of jail time, but said, “I never once considered co-operation and never would. It is against everything I believe in. On my right arm I have a tattoo reading ‘strive to survive causing least suffering possible.’ This is something I live by every single day and will continue to live by whether I am in a cage or not.” Plante is being held at the Federal Detention Center Sea Tac in Seattle.</p>
<p>Since news of the Seattle grand jury and its resistors emerged a few months ago, a host of protests, rallies, acts of graffiti and sabotage have taken place across the country to express solidarity with the Northwest anarchists. Large banners have been illegally dropped in cities from New York to Atlanta, while police vehicles and substations have been graffitied and vandalized in Oakland, Calif., San Francisco, Illinois and elsewhere. The Committee Against Political Repression put out a petition to the U.S. attorney, with nearly 400 organizations signed on, stating opposition to the treatment of the subpoenaed activists.</p>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/129" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">grand jury resistance</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/130" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Seattle</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/107" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Portland</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/131" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Northwest</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/132" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fifth Amendment</a> </div>
Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:59:00 +0000Tasha748 at https://www.nlg.orghttps://www.nlg.org/news/third-northwest-activist-jailed-staying-silent#commentsThe City Can't Fire Its Own Cops https://www.nlg.org/news/city-cant-fire-its-own-cops
<div class="field-creator">
Sarah Mirk </div>
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Portland Mercury </div>
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<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2012-09-25T00:00:00-04:00">Tue, 09/25/2012</span> </div>
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<a href="http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2012/09/25/the-city-cant-fire-its-own-cops">View the original piece</a> </div>
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<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.nlg.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_node/public/images/1348600241-img_7253.jpg?itok=UOs-dDIi" width="400" height="266" alt="" title="Lawyer Tom Steensen and the step-father of Aaron Campbell (left) at a city hall rally protesting the forced re-hiring of Officer Ron Frashour this morning." /> </div>
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<p>Who's in charge of deciding whether police officers can be fired? In Portland, not the police commissioner. Here it's the state employment bureaucrats—the Oregon Employment Relations Board issued a ruling last week that forces the city to <a href="http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2012/09/24/breaking-state-board-orders-mayor-adams-to-reinstate-ron-frashour">rehire Officer Ron Frashour</a>, who Mayor Sam Adams <a href="http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/fire-frashour-done/Content?oid=3053450">fired two years ago</a> after he fatally shot Portlander Aaron Campbell in the back.</p>
<p>The perfunctory decision ironically comes just a week after a <a href="http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/saving-us-from-ourselves/Content?oid=7090727">major federal investigation found that Portland police lack oversight and accountability</a> when using force and have a pattern of using excessive force against people with mental illnesses (like Aaron Campbell). The Portland Police Association successfully argued that Frashour's shooting of Campbell was within police policy.</p>
<p>"I will never believe that police are trained to shoot someone in the back," said Campbell's mother, Marva Davis, in a statement read aloud at a police oversight rally this morning at city hall. "The community doesn't need people like you, you are a liability."</p>
<p>The rally raised the issue: If the mayor can't fire Officer Frashour, who can he fire? Police oversight activists worry that the strength of the police union will lead to less accountability for officers who the city tries to punish.</p>
<p>Portland National Lawyers Guild President Ashlee Albies says the police union is far too powerful in its influence over the outcome of use-of-force cases. "This is above and beyond protecting workers rights, this is the police making public policy to protect cops who kill people," says Albies. "When the community and the city are crying out for the ability to hold officers accountable and that can't happen because of a labor agreement—that's problematic."</p>
<p>"The city must take control of its police force," echoes Aaron Campbell family attorney Tom Steenson. "We have lost it."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.portlandcopwatch.org/">Portland Copwatch</a>'s Dan Handelman is "ticked off" by this week's ruling, but congratulates Mayor Adams on his promise to take the issue to court. "Whatever the mayor does could set precedent, but it would be a long, protracted court battle," says Handelman.</p>
<p>For the meantime, police oversight advocates are pressing the police force to not return Officer Frashour to patrol but, if they do rehire him, put him in a desk job. For his part, police union President Daryl Turner says Mayor Sam Adams is continuing to pursue the firing of Officer Frashour because he has a <a href="http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2012/09/24/breaking-state-board-orders-mayor-adams-to-reinstate-ron-frashou">"personal vendetta."</a></p>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/106" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police union</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/107" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Portland</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/108" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police shooting</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/109" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police accountability</a> </div>
Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:28:00 +0000Tasha738 at https://www.nlg.orghttps://www.nlg.org/news/city-cant-fire-its-own-cops#commentsOccupy Arrestees Win Their Right to Full Trials—Even Though They May Not Need Ithttps://www.nlg.org/news/occupy-arrestees-win-their-right-full-trials%E2%80%94even-though-they-may-not-need-it
<div class="field-creator">
Hannah Hoffman </div>
<div class="field-media-source">
Willamette Week </div>
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<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2012-02-09T00:00:00-05:00">Thu, 02/09/2012</span> </div>
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<a href="http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-28213-occupy_arrestees_win_their_right_to_full_trials%E2.html">View the original piece</a> </div>
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<img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.nlg.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_node/public/images/occupypdxeviction_3802%28arrest%29.nar_.jpg?itok=gMooYTjW" width="299" height="199" alt="" title="An Occupier gets arrested during the eviction of the Occupy Portland encampment from Chapman and Lownsdale squares. - IMAGE: Steel Brooks" /> </div>
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<p>The estimated 160 people arrested during Occupy Portland protests in the past five months have won the right to jury trials—a legal victory that advocates say will force prosecutors to mount a case in every arrest.</p>
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<div class="size1" id="contentText">Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Albrecht ruled Wednesday that for certain misdemeanors charges—class A and B—defendants have the right to a trial, even though prosecutors have reduced many charges to violations.<br /><br /><br /><br />
Bear Wilner-Nugent, a member of the National Lawyers Guild, who's representing Occupier Keller Henry, tells <span style="font-style: italic;">WW</span> that many people arrested in the protests want a trial because they believe they have a constitutional right to a full airing of the charges against them.<br /><br /><br /><br />
He says that he believes the DA's office has been trying to avoid trials when it reduced many charges to violations, the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket. Violations result in a fine and no probation or jail time.<br /><br /><br /><br />
Chief Deputy District Attorney Rod Underhill declined to comment on any of the Occupy cases or Albrecht's ruling, but he says reducing misdemeanors to violations is a common practice. (Underhill, by the way, is running for district attorney.)<br /><br /><br /><br />
The ruling could mean many Occupiers won't face any punishment at all.<br /><br /><br /><br />
Wilner-Nugent says trials are expensive, and the DA’s office can drop charges if they can’t afford to prosecute them. He says forcing the state to drop the charges isn’t his strategy.<br /><br /><br /><br />
“The point of defending the charges (in court) is not to run up the meter on the state," he says. "We’re not trying to make it more expensive for expense’s sake.”<br /><br /><br /><br />
Nevertheless, he says, every Occupier he knows of plans to go to court.<br /><br /><br /><br />
“Could we resolve it? Yes, we probably could resolve it," he says, "But this case will go to trial.... I think they’ll just drop the charges. I think they should, and I think they will.”</div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/33" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Occupy</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/107" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Portland</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/139" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">right to trial</a> </div>
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<a href="/taxonomy/term/140" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sixth Amendment</a> </div>
Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:57:42 +0000Tasha754 at https://www.nlg.orghttps://www.nlg.org/news/occupy-arrestees-win-their-right-full-trials%E2%80%94even-though-they-may-not-need-it#comments